Some people seem to have the magic touch when it comes to writing bestselling novels James Paterson, Elmore Leonard, Stephen King and Nora Roberts come to mind. They each have multiple bestsellers and a number of good sellers.

How did they write so many bestsellers? They’ll tell you it was hard word, learning and knowing the elements of style. By writing solid sentences and creating loveable characters that people can relate too. It is all those things and more. Some they won’t share with you or me for that matter. “Who am I? I am Cliff Roberts a fairly successful author. I have 5 bestselling Ebooks. Four novels and one non-fiction. I’m not sure I know exactly what makes a bestseller, but I’ll be glad to share with you what I believe it takes to sell books and how by doing that you could become a bestseller. Let’s start with the differences between you and the major authors or the bestsellers. What do they have that you don’t? Advertising- The big time authors, whether it’s their money funding it or the publishers, are advertising. They advertise typically in national magazines and newspapers. They do bill board campaigns in high visibility corridors such as the major freeways in around colleges, plus billboard ads in train stations and airports. You may even hear ads for their books on the “All News” or major talk shows on radio stations across the country. The old adage, it still holds true, in advertising is, “HE WHO SPENDS THE MOST WINS” Name recognition- Another area that the big time authors have an advantage over us Independent authors is name recognition. People know their name. Why? Well they have been selling books awhile probably longer that you and again they have advertised their way to being a household name. At first glance you may be thinking, “Okay, we just buy lots of advertising.” Well, no quite. I’ll explain as we move forward. Track record- Chances are if the author has a well-known name they have been around for a while and have published several books that have caught the reader interest. They may or not have been bestselling Ebook authors on the internet and they may not have had a string of bestsellers. Chances are though, they have had some presence on the social media internet and at least one of their books has made to the bestseller ranks. The important fact to remember is that a bestseller is a top 10 book in any genre and a #1 bestseller means the book was at least for a few hours the number one book in its genre. A previous bestseller- Chances are if the author is a well-known they have some other books and some if not all have been bestselling books. We talked about how the person who spends the most in advertising wins but that it isn’t exactly true. Having a large budget for advertising will help draw some attention from the public but it isn’t the only thing will nor is it the only thing you should do to gain the public’s attention. Many authors have thought that if only they had big enough ads they would have all the sales they could want. Advertising does help but it can’t over problems like, a bad cover, a bad story or bad word of mouth. So how can we as Independent Authors compete with authors that have the big publishers behind them? We have to do a better job with every aspect of our book business. It’s not enough that we are on Face Book or Google or Good Reads. We need to be everywhere. All the major social media sights. Face Book, Google, Good Reads, Pinterest, twitter, and Linkedin, etc. We’re going to have get interviews done. Both in print media and if possible on the radio and television. We have to get reviews done by people other than fellow authors. Don’t miss understand this. We‘ll take reviews from almost everyone but when we use fellow authors too much, the public notices the recurring names and discounts the honesty of the reviews. So its strangers we want to review us. Hopefully we get reviews from people who buy the book but I know of several authors who have received five to ten reviews, all terrific five stars and then one pops up that claims it’s a one. What the? In the long term, I believe this is a good thing because it shows the potential readers that you’re not perfect and they tend to start buying. Go figure. Okay we have to do a better job with our basic promotion. But we also need to do a better job with our books as well. They have to be written better and on a subject that people want to read. I ‘m sorry but I’m about to make a lot of people mad. You have to write books on subjects that people want to read. There are thousands of books out there dealing with strange stuff like how they love their six dogs like children or the author really likes hot dogs. Or the best way polish your car. I’m sorry but 90% of the books on the market are not what people want to read. If you’re not going to write a book that appeals to a large number of people, you cannot expect to see large numbers of sales. It’s the simple truth. So how do we know what the public wants to read? Go over the Amazon ranking and check out the top 100 books in the categories that are close to what type of book you want to write and see what is selling. Chances are, if there are no books on a similar subject to your book, you haven’t got a book the public wants. Another way to know if you book is something the public wants to read, is whether or not it fits fairly easily into a genre. If you can’t figure out very quickly what genre your book is in, you have your work cut out for you. Now having said this I want you to hear this as well. Write your book, do the best you can with it all the way around and present to the public. We never know what will catch the public’s imagination. So don’t quit, but be prepared, it may not gain acceptance but you should still try. Okay, we have a book which we’ll promote and we’ve made sure it’s in a genre that sells. But we can’t stop there, next we have to address the books content. There are thousands of books that have a great story premise but they don’t sell any better than the ones on subjects that only mother could love. Why? Well there are a number of reasons. First off, the editing wasn’t as professional as it could have been. We’ve all heard of the grammar police and we tend to think them as the some crazed ex-writer want to be or an old spinster of an English teacher set on getting back at all those students who disobeyed and laughed at her and well, it’s true. And although they are pathetic, sometimes they are right. So in order to be a bestseller, you had better have as professional an edit, you can find. Yes, editing cost money but then so does putting out a bad book. Then comes the font style and size issues. Here size does matter and the font style matters, too. If you pick a font size that’s too big or too small the reader has trouble reading it. If you pick a font that is too ornate, the readers will have trouble reading it. These seem like small details, but they can have a big impact on whether the readers will extend the effort to read a book. There is a solid reason that big mainstream publishers don’t use small or exotic fonts-the readers don’t buy it. So follow the leader here and give your book a better chance. The standard book is single or 1.15 spaced with size eleven or twelve font. The style font is typically, Arial, Verdana New times Roman, Currier New or Calibri. Yes a few others are used but as often as these. Again follow the leader and give your book a better chance. Now let’s talk about how you structure the story. In fiction of any kind, it is ruled by one simple law. Cause and Effect. Everything that happens in your story must happen in a natural and logical order. You don’t share effects without first establishing the cause. When you follow this rule the story flows smoothly, the reader isn’t left guessing how that happened or why or what just happened, which then causes them to start wondering about the plot or the character that doesn’t quite fit or the car that just drove down their street with the bad muffler. They stop enjoying the story when it doesn’t flow right. The effect is to break their emotional tie to the story so it goes from being a real page turner to another one of those books that gathers dust on the shelf. It also leads to people saying the story was dull, unexciting, poorly written and they leave it unread. The stories context and continuity is critical to keeping the readers engaged in the story. It’s an emotional connection to the story that keeps the readers reading, the word of mouth positive and the sales ringing up. No cause and effect equals no context and continuity which in turn equals no emotional tie, thus no sales Which brings us to even more that has to be right in order to reach the level known as bestseller. Let’s talk book covers. If the book cover looks cheap or fails to generate interest or doesn’t fit with the story somehow, you could be looking at disappointing sales numbers. So do your best to ensure, you have a great cover. It needs to innovative. Something that draws your attention when you look across the room. What’s on the cover, counts too. What? The title of you book is important. If the title doesn’t fit the story, it is likely to fail far more often than not. So think long and hard about what the title will be. Then make sure it stands out on the front cover, on the back cover and the spline. It needs to a nice contrasting color to base color of the cover or simply black or white. The spline has have the books title and the authors name on it in the same font and same color as the font on the front cover. If this over looked. There is little chance the public will pull your book out the line of books turned side way on the bookshelf. Libraries will be very hesitant to stock your book because it has to be displayed with the full cover showing and it takes up a lot of shelf space. Of course, if you’re only publishing in Ebook format, well this doesn’t apply at all. What about the back cover blurb? If the back cover blurb isn’t written in such a way as to entice the reader to pick up the book, they won’t bother reading the prolog or bother to buy the book either. An uninviting blurb will cause you to lose sales. Readers tend to judge the whole book by the cover which includes the back cover blurb. If blurb doesn’t entice the potential reader, make them curious, they typically put the perceived dull book down and reach for another. Your back cover blurb is meant to be where you set the books hook in the reader. To cause them be curious. To part way or all the way convince the potential reader they want to read this book instead of some other book. Once again though if you’re only going to publish an Ebook, this doesn’t apply. Books with bad covers may sell a few copies but they typically fail to reach a sales volume anyone is happy with. Unless you have incredible word of mouth advertising and an exceptional story, there will be few if any sales of your book, if it has a bad cover. Another critical portion of the book is the first five to ten pages. This is the portion of the book, many potential readers read while still debating whether they’ll purchase it. They’re looking at the style in which you write. Some glimpse of the underlying story that helps to create well rounded characters. Most of all though, they are looking to get hooked into the story. They want to feel some emotion and to feel curiosity as to what comes next. If your first five to ten pages don’t have these features, it will strangle sales. The progression of a book’s sale goes like this. The potential reader sees the front cover and finds it interesting enough to seek out the back cover to read the blurb, if they like the back cover blurb, they then open up the book and read some of the book. Typically five to ten pages. If they like the sampling they will typically buy the book. What can you do to make the first few pages exciting and emotional for the reader? Remember cause and effect. The first few pages is where you show a major cause and foreshadow the effect or share a portion of it. This is where you set the hook for the reader. The hook is that bit of action and or suspense that draws the reader into the story. Makes them curious. Shows them your writing style and also the first glimpse of the plot within the plot. Which is the secondary storyline or back story that creates the depth of the characters and the story line. Now let’s talk the hard truth. How can you become a bestseller? It takes hard work and bit of luck. The marketplace is flooded with more than six million books a year. Unlike other industries where models change and are no longer offered as new. Books can be offered, and are offered as new, for as long as they are in print. A book is new to any person who hasn’t read it before and so year after year, a book remains on the market and in competition with new releases. So the six million new books published each year join a market that is flooded with books released as far back as twenty or twenty –five years ago? Probably more than that. Which means right away your book is just one among a huge amount of other books, millions of books huge. Then we get into the creation of your book. Your book has to be on a subject that the public fines interesting. It has to be well written. Not too long or too short. It needs to be well edited and the context and continuity have to in the right order and fit naturally. The cause and effect factor has to be correct. For every action there must be a reaction—cause and effect. It has to lead the reader though the story and set the pace for the reader. Think of cause as pushing the reader on to a page and effect as pulling the reader from the top of the page to the bottom of it where another cause pushes the reader forward yet again. This is done by invoking emotion in your writing. Without emotion in your story, you can’t invoke emotion in the reader and thus there isn’t any connection between them. The writer owes the reader an emotional thrill ride. But it doesn’t end there. Even if you have done all you can to make the story great, you still have to present it right. The book needs to be formatted just right. The font can’t be too small or too big. The fonts need to be the right style as well. The whole reason is to make it easy to read. Having an ornate font or a font that’s too big or too small, can cause the reader eye strain and/or headaches which will cause them to stop reading and quite possibly never return to finish it. The book cover comes next and it has to be of a nature to entice the potential readers to pick it up. It has to make the potential readers curious and wanting to know more. The blurb on the back cover has to do more of the same as the front cover has. The blurb has to be strong and a solid bit of storytelling in and of itself, so as to increase the potential reader’s curiosity which equates to creating an emotional connection with the reader. Without the emotional connection there is typically no sale. Which brings us to the first five to ten pages where the emotional connect has to be solidified. These pages are critical. Any reader whether they are a member of the reading public or an editor for a big time publisher, they have to be hooked. The fate of your book lying the in words on the first five to ten pages. This where the major cause, plot, is set for whole book. This where you foreshadow the effect the cause creates. It’s important to remember that promoting your book starts a month to six weeks before it’s released and continues for as long as you want to sell the book. Promotion is not a one-time or something thing. It’s all the time thing. If you want to be in the game with the big players, you have to play the game like the big players do. They promote and promote and promote. Now there is a small publisher secret I’ve learned that I can share with you. It’s sort of like the fast track to bestseller status. When you place your book on the market Amazon or Kindle will ask you for the books genre. The genre is a category in which your book fits with other books of similar story line. Say your book is a sci-fi story about the end of the world caused by the aliens stealing all the surface water on the planet. Now you could place your book in the category with the title Sci-fi. If you do it isn’t likely you’ll become a bestseller anytime soon, because this where the major Sci-Fi writers books are along with thousands of other sci-fi writers are hanging out. People like Asimov, Wells, Koontz and Bradbury are all listed here. But if you were to refine your category just a bit, say to something like, Sci-FI/world ending/space aliens/water there are bound to be a whole lot less authors listed here and thus your chances of becoming a bestseller are far more likely. Many major authors got they’re break by placing their books in the small more defined categories to begin with. The drawback is that because you are in such a highly defined category the readers may have a harder time finding you. You will need to counter act this minor bit of obscurity by doing a bigger and better job of promoting. Then as your sales grow, which translates into being more popular, you can gradually move up to the less obscure genre categories until you find yourself shoulder to shoulder with the major players. Well I hope that was helpful, though I know it wasn’t exactly a here do this and become a best- seller kind of story. But then like every book and every author, no two are the same. If you follow the information the best you can, it will increase your chance of becoming a bestseller. There is no way anyone can guarantee you will be a bestseller which is why a bit of luck has to play into it as well as doing all of the things listed above. Just remember that you can have the great story ever told since the bible and still not have a bestseller if no one knows you have a book for sale. So get out there and promote, promote and promote some more. If it‘s all more than you want to deal with hire someone to do it for you. Remember though, “He who spends the most wins” applies to the money spent on the actual ads, not on the guy who arranged to run them. Seek out the best bang for the buck, I did and I have five bestsellers to my credit thanks to my PR guy. Author Cliff Roberts My books: Reprisal! The Eagle Rises, Reprisal! The Gauntlet, Fatal Mistake, Conch Republic and Is There Something I Should Know? Coming soon—Reprisal! The Eagle’s Sorrow Mid-March 2014 and Apollo Road May 2014 Email: authorcliffroberts@live.com FaceBook authorcliffroberts Website authorcliffroberts.wordpress.com